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Brad Pitt has come out admitting he used to take too many drugs and felt like he was wasting his life away before meeting Angelina.

“For a long time I thought I did too much damage – drug damage,” Pitt reveals in an interview in the latest issue of Esquire magazine.

“I was a bit of a drifter. A guy who felt he grew up in something of a vacuum and wanted to see things, wanted to be inspired. I followed that other thing. I spent years f*cking off.”

“But then I got burnt out and felt that I was wasting my opportunity. It was a conscious change.

“This was about a decade ago. It was an epiphany.”

…which overlaps with the time that Pitt, 49, was married to Jennifer Aniston (from 2000 to 2005). The actor has previously spoken out about his penchant for drugs, telling Parade magazine in 2011 that he spent the 1990s “sitting on a couch, holding a joint, hiding out” and that he felt “pathetic” and “wasn’t living an interesting life.”

Backing up Pitt’s admission of living a lacklustre life is Jean Black, his makeup artist from 1990 onwards.

“This is not to say anything negative about Jennifer. I was part of that and I know that he and Jen are very good friends and he cared deeply for her.

“But in Angie he saw a very adventurous person who was grabbing onto life and taking it to it’s nth degree. It was intriguing as I felt Brad had that in him and wanted to unleash it.”

“I have very few friends. I have a handful of close friends and I have my family and I haven’t known life to be any happier.

“I always thought that if I wanted to do a family, I wanted to do it big. I wanted there to be chaos in the house…there’s constant chatter in our house, whether it’s giggling or screaming or crying or banging.

“I love it. I love it. I love it. I hate it when they’re gone. I hate it. Maybe it’s nice to be in a hotel room for a day – ‘Oh, nice, I can finally read a paper.’ But then, by the next day, I miss that cacophony, all that life.”